I taped this off of KSCU or KSJS in San Jose in 1986 (or maybe '85) and have no idea what the song is or who it is by.  If you recognize it, please let me know.  It sounds a lot like The Call, but I have gone through their whole back catalogue and not found it...

Mystery song of the 1980s

FEAR OF THE SILENCE was a show I did (under the alias of Peabo Bryson jr. III) once a week on Surge, the student radio station in Southampton in 2003.  They were heady days.  I was trying to finish my PhD.  My home nation and my host nation collaborated to lie us into a war.  It was a beautiful warm spring.  I did some of the shows with David J. Knight (alias Norman ‘June Bug’ Meeks), and some solo.  The show opened with Grace Braun’s “Go Bananas” and closed with the clip from David Thomas and Two Pale Boys “Ghosts” from which the show took its name:

And they leave the lights on in this town all night, 
for fear of the darkness. 
And a radio is playing all night, 
for the fear of silence - 
the silence of someone's thoughts. 

The idea - to the extent there was one - was to riff on this dynamic between having to speak (dead air is not allowed; the phd is due; there are crimes being committed in your name) and having nothing to say (there’s a preset playlist; our ‘independent radio’ was a commercial network, I had writer’s block, our governments already let us know we were irrelevant).  Sometimes the magic worked.  Sometimes it didn’t.

Some weeks there was a plan.  Some weeks I showed up in the studio with a small stack of cds, a rhythm egg and a sense of panic that sometimes turned productive.  “W” was one of the latter.  I accidentally discovered after 3 songs that everything I had played started with W.  So I went with it, and in many ways the show came closest to what I was trying to do in terms of sound and voice - but still not quite there.

(tracks)
(news)
Go bananas (intro) - Grace Braun
Was ist ist  - Einstürzende Neubauten
When I see you - Macy Gray
Web in Front - Archers of Loaf
White Wedding - Murderdolls
Way back when - Aimee Mann
White Water Song - Bell X1
 -- live acoustic rendering of Pere Ubu's Turpentine! by  yours truly  - - 
Waterfalls - TLC
West of Rome - Vic Chesnutt
When the Last Time - Clipse
White Trash Heroes - Archers of Loaf
Wimmin - Ashley Hamilton
Who Said (Stuck in the UK) - Planet Funk
One Million Kisses - Grace Braun
Fourth of July - Aimee Mann
Chicken - 80s Matchbox B-line disaster
Nasa Clapping - Robyn Hitchcock
(closing fadeout: "Ghosts by David Thomas and Two Pale Boys)

Fear of the Silence, 2003: "W"

FEAR OF THE SILENCE was a show I did (under the alias of Peabo Bryson jr. III) with the help of David J. Knight (alias Norman "June Bug" Meeks) once a week on Surge, the student radio station in Southampton in 2003. They were heady days. I was trying to finish my PhD. My home nation and my host nation collaborated to lie us into a war. It was a beautiful warm spring. 

On 13 February 2003 David and I did a show we called "Love Songs from the Grave" - featuring a large number of artitsts who had died prematurely as a means of getting people to think about what the costs of the invasion of Iraq would be.

This is from that show, when stealing a page from the Theodor Adorno Jazz Quartet, we did our own version of the news - two stories at once , in chant, with the sound of a stuck CD player in the background.

...and now the news:  news from Fear of the Silence, 13 Feb 2003

Another instalment of Fear of the Silence, a radio show I did on Surge Radio in Southampton in 2003.  This one was playing around with the difference between the information content and the emotional content of the radio announcer.  Trying to grab some of my own issues as a PhD sutdent in the final phase, and the sense of impotence in a country that was going to war for no rational reason.  It didn't all work, but it had its moments.   This show leaned heavily on a mix CD made by Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton of Athens, GA's own Casper and the Cookies.

Fear of the Silence: Talkin' Loud, Sayin' Nothin'

Recorded 23 May on my iphone in the old town of Luxembourg City, walking down the busy street with the Cathedral entrance, then turning into a quiet square to drown out the traffic noise and hear the bells.  If you like bells, it's worth listening to all the way to the end,

Alec Badenoch